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Americans vote to elect president after ugliest campaign

[email protected] (Agencies)
November 8, 2016

Washington, Nov 8: Millions of Americans today lined up at polling stations to elect either the country's first woman president in its 240-year history or a political outsider in the White House as the race between Hillary Clinton and his rival Donald Trump remain too close to call.trump-clinton

Fighting for every single vote at stake, Democratic nominee Clinton and her Republican rival Trump made their last minute forceful argument before the American people with their own vision for the world's largest economy, ending the ugliest presidential campaign in US history.

Clinton, 69, was joined by husband Bill as she addressed a massive rally in Raleigh in the key battle ground state of North Carolina, which was entertained by Lady Gaga.

Trump, 70, made a last minute scheduled stop in Michigan to address thousands of his supporters hoping that he might be able to swing this state from the Democrats.

The two rallies ended around 1 AM (local time), just six hours before opening of the polling booths in the East Coast.

The first ballots were cast in a sleepy hamlet in New Hampshire, traditionally the first in the nation to vote on Election Day, with Clinton winning the contest.

Clinton registered her first 'win' in the 2016 elections by four votes to two against Trump soon after midnight in the remote Dixville Notch, New Hampshire.

While Clinton is close to victory mark, Trump must win most of the battleground states to clinch the magic figure of 270 Electoral College votes.

Arizona (11), Florida (29), Nevada (6), Nebraska 2nd Congressional District (1), New Hampshire (4) and North Carolina (15) are key battleground states.

An estimated 200 million people are eligible to cast their votes to elect the country's 45th president along with hundreds of Congressmen and members of state legislatures and local civic bodies.

A record 42 million have already voted using the "early voting" provision of the American electoral system, surpassing the 2012 record when 32.3 million people had voted in advance.

Clinton and Trump crisscrossed several stops in key battleground states on the final day of campaigning which the US media has termed as the ugliest and the most divisive.

"This election is basically between division and unity in our country. It's between strong and steady leadership or a loose cannon who could put everything at risk. It is between an economy that works for everyone or one that is even more stacked for those at the top," Clinton told a cheering crowd in Raleigh, North Carolina.

"None of us, none of us, want to wake up on Wednesday morning and wish we had done more," she said, which she repeated in her other election rallies including the one in Philadelphia, which was also addressed by US President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle.

Latest poll indicated that while the election seems to have tightened in the last few days, Clinton maintains a slight lead over Trump. Almost all major polls are predicting a victory for Clinton, but Trump appeared confident of winning some of the key battleground states and thus wrest the White House from the Democrats after a gap of eight years.
 
"Do you want America to be ruled by the corrupt political class. Or do you want to be ruled by you, the people," Trump said in Michigan.

"Political establishment has brought distraction of factories and jobs," Trump said.

"Tomorrow the working class will strike back," he said in New Hampshire and in Michigan he declared "today is the Independence Day".

Trump kicked off his Monday engagements with a rally in Florida.

"We're going to be one country. We're not going to be a divided nation anymore, we're a divided nation. We are a divided nation. We will also cancel billions and billions of dollars in global warming payments to the United Nations where those payments disappear. And we're going to use all that money to invest in the infrastructure and we could even say the environmental infrastructure of our country," Trump said.

Trump would be spending the election day in New York. His 'victory rally' has been schedule at a hotel in New York, a few kilometres away from the 'victory rally' of Clinton.

The Republican presidential nominee's election journey has been sensational as from a rank political outsider he has come close to becoming the US President.

This year, the Republican field began with a long list of 17 candidates, including Indian-origin Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie and former Florida governor Jeb Bush. The Democratic field, on the other hand, was not as crowded, with just Hillary Clinton and Senator Bernie Sanders in the race.

Unlike India, in the US campaigning can be done even as voting continues.

Every state would start counting the votes as polling concludes.

One of the main highlight of the last few weeks has been the electioneering blitz by Obama.
In the last 10 days, he addressed as many as 17 rallies -- rare for an outgoing President.

In the last phase of the campaign, the Clinton campaign also brought in popular singers, which Trump alleged was a move to attract crowd.

The two campaigns have different theme. While 'Make America Great Again' is the theme of Trump, 'Stronger Together' is Clinton's slogan.

Both the candidates have said they would accept the results of the elections, but reserve the right to challenge in case of close results. The new president would be sworn in on January 20.

Till then the winner would be called president-elect and would have a transition team in place working from Washington. 

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News Network
March 28,2020

Washington, Mar 28: A US-based lab has unveiled a portable test that can tell if someone has COVID-19 in as little as five minutes, it said in a statement Friday.

Abbot Laboratories said the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) had given it emergency authorization to begin making the test available to healthcare providers as early as next week.

The test, which is the size of a small toaster and uses molecular technology, also shows negative results within 13 minutes, the company said in a press statement.

"The COVID-19 pandemic will be fought on multiple fronts, and a portable molecular test that offers results in minutes adds to the broad range of diagnostic solutions needed to combat this virus," said Abbot president and chief operating officer Robert Ford.

The test's small size means it can be deployed outside the "traditional four walls of a hospital in outbreak hotspots," Ford said, and Abbott is working with the FDA to send it to virus epicenters.

The test has not been cleared or approved by the FDA, and has only been authorized for emergency use by approved labs and healthcare providers, the company said.

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News Network
March 16,2020

Manila, Mar 16: The Philippines has detected an outbreak of avian flu in a northern province after tests showed presence of the highly infectious H5N6 subtype of the influenza A virus in a quail farm, the country's farm minister said on Monday.

Agriculture Secretary William Dar said the bird flu virus, the same strain that hit some local poultry farms in 2017, was detected in Jaen municipality in Nueva Ecija province, where about 1,500 quails had died on one farm alone.

A total of 12,000 quails have been destroyed and buried to prevent further infections, Dar said, citing field reports.

"We are on top of the situation," he said. "Surveillance around the 1-km and 7-km radius will be carried out immediately to ensure that the disease has not progressed around the said perimeter."

Animal quarantine checkpoints have also been set up to restrict the movement of all live domestic birds to and from the quarantine area, he said.

"We would like to emphasise that this is a single case affecting one quail farm only," Dar said.

Dr. Arlene Vytiaco, technical spokeswoman for avian flu at the agriculture department, said that while there is a possibility of transmission to humans through excretion and secretion, "the chances are very slim".

"There is also zero mortality rate," she said.

Dar said his department and the local government were jointly conducting an investigation and contact-tracing to determine the source of infection.

To ensure steady domestic supply of poultry, he said the transport of day-old chicks, hatching eggs and chicken meat will be allowed provided the source farms have tested negative for bird flu.

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News Network
June 16,2020

Seoul, Jun 16: North Korea blew up an inter-Korean liaison office on its side of the border on Tuesday, the South's Unification Ministry said, after days of increasingly virulent rhetoric from Pyongyang.

"North Korea blows up Kaesong Liaison Office at 14:49," the ministry, which handles inter-Korean relations, said in a one-line alert sent to reporters.

The statement came minutes after an explosion was heard and smoke seen rising from the long-shuttered joint industrial zone in Kaesong where the liaison office was located, Yonhap news agency reported citing unspecified sources.

Its destruction came after Kim Yo Jong, the powerful sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, said at the weekend: "Before long, a tragic scene of the useless north-south joint liaison office completely collapsed would be seen."

Since early June, North Korea has issued a series of vitriolic condemnations of the South over activists sending anti-Pyongyang leaflets over the border -- something defectors do on a regular basis.

Last week it announced it was severing all official communication links with South Korea.

The leaflets -- usually attached to hot air balloons or floated in bottles -- criticise North Korean leader Kim Jong Un for human rights abuses and his nuclear ambitions.

Analysts say Pyongyang may be seeking to manufacture a crisis to increase pressure on Seoul while nuclear negotiations with Washington are at a standstill.

Earlier Tuesday, North Korea's army said it was "fully ready" to take action against the South, included re-entering areas that had been demilitarised under an inter-Korean agreement.

"North Korea is frustrated that the South has failed to offer an alternative plan to revive the US-North talks, let alone create a right atmosphere for the revival," said Cheong Seong-chang, a director of the Sejong Institute's Center for North Korean Studies.

"It has concluded the South has failed as a mediator in the process."

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